Topics - Ha'autmuti

Hopefully at least a few of you remember me; it feels like I've been gone for a looong time. The good news is: I graduated from university! Yay! The bad news is, my religious practice has completely lapsed. I haven't done Senut in... longer than I want to talk about. Months, at least. I actually forgot about Wep Ronpet until it was already over. I feel like I've been really spiritually starved for a while now, which has only made things harder: I'm still reeling from the monumental change that is (finally) graduating college and moving on to the next thing... as well as the anxiety that is not quite knowing what the next thing is yet.

I'm ready to start once again fulfilling the promise I made to my Mothers when I took my Shemsu vows. I've started reading The Search for God in Ancient Egypt by Jan Assmann and thinking seriously about my gods again, and that already has me feeling more centered. My shrine area is a mess, but I'm hoping to clean it up in the next couple of days, so I can start doing Senut again (aaah, I'm scared of going back!). I want to get involved, more consistently than before.

So that's where I am right now. Hope everyone here is well, and I'll be seeing you around.

So, I've been gone for a while! Life got very busy, but I hope to make a return soon.

Right now, however, a close friend of mine has a cousin who has gone missing in Idaho (the Idaho Falls area). Here are some social media links with more information and pictures for anyone who lives in the area or has friends who do:FacebookTwitter

She is 14, has been missing for over a day now, and has a history of self-harm. It is not known what she was wearing when she disappeared. Please pray for her to be found safely, and share these links with anyone you know who lives in the area. I'm praying as well. Serqet, my Mother, please protect this child and see her safely home.

This summer, I had a huge crisis of faith, in a non-religious sense--faith in myself, faith in my choices, and faith in my ability to achieve my goals. Getting back on my feet for the start of this academic year was a really difficult process, and one I barely managed in time.

My personal, professional, and academic lives are now going quite well! But my spiritual life is still suffering, and I need to remedy that. I feel like coming back to the forums is the first step in that process, so here I am. I've missed you all!

I tried to look at the calendar for upcoming chats, but my kemet.org login (PhoenixJRising) doesn't appear to be working anymore. Is anyone around who can help with that?

I play a popular online dragon breeding game called Flight Rising, and I'd be meaning to change my username for ages. Today I finally got around to it, and all my usual online names were taken, so I thought... well, why not use Ha'aut?

So I did this on a whim. And then immediately went "oh gosh maybe I shouldn't have done that."

Is it disrespectful, or... I don't know, wrong somehow, to use the name the Gods gave you in non-religious contexts? I didn't use my full Shemsu name, because that felt wrong, but should I not have used the nickname?

Sometimes I wish I was better at thinking things through before doing them...

So I've been doing a lot of thinking, praying, and mentally preparing to have my RPD sometime in the next several months. This is a big, big step for me and I'm not taking it lightly.

I've filled out the RPD Questionnaire a half dozen times now, and each time I feel frustrated and unsure, like I'm not quite getting across what I want to say. Sometimes I feel like I'm giving too much information, sometimes too little. I know that what we say on the questionnaire doesn't affect our results either way, but I can't shake the feeling that it's important to get it right.

So my question is, would anyone be willing to share their RPD Questionnaire answers with me (either those who have had it in the past or those who are considering it now)? I feel like if I have a chance to see how others have answered the questions, I might have a better idea of how I want to answer them for myself.

If you're not comfortable sharing your actual answers, even just a quick description of how you chose to go about answering the questions could be helpful.

So, it occurred to me today that the Sekhmet I've been having contact with may be, specifically, Sekhmet-Mut. Only... I have no experience with syncretic deities, AT ALL, so I have no idea how to tell!

Anyone care to share experiences with Sekhmet-Mut? How is she different from Sekhmet "proper" so to speak?

Who are the Names you find to be the friendliest and the easiest to approach? I'm sure it varies a lot from person to person, but I'd be interesting in hearing your perspectives.

I ask because I am still quite new to kemeticism, to the Netjeru, and to the concept of approaching deities in general. I get nervous easily and I often feel as though I am probably doing it all wrong and possibly insulting Them by accident. I'm also a natural skeptic, so I often I have doubts, and then I worry that having doubts will make it so they don't want to communicate with me and I get so anxious that I can't focus on attempting to communicate with Them at all. It's a... very annoying cycle, to say the least.

So far, I've had the most success with Wepwawet, Nun, and Hethert. Wepwawet in particular seemed to respond as soon as I first approached Him, which surprised me because I hadn't intended to work with Him extensively. While Nun doesn't have the same active energy as Wepwawet, I do often get a sense of Him being passively there, infinite and vast, nevertheless. Hethert, meanwhile, was the first Name I approached, and while I haven't gotten the same kind of strong response from Her yet, I do feel connected to Her somewhat.

Mostly I'm just wondering how to go about forming connections to Netjeru, and who might be good to start with, as a beginner.

My name is Phoenix, and I just applied for the beginners class here. As I said in the subject line of this post, I am new in every sense of the word: new to kemeticism, new to the House of Netjer, and... new to religion in general, frankly. I was raised almost entirely without religion, and the past year has been something of a whirlwind experience for me in terms of building a spiritual foundation for myself. I only discovered kemeticism in the past couple of months.

I do have a really good feeling about this place, though, and that's a first for me. Still, please be gentle with me while I learn my way around.